Friday, July 6, 2012

Did the BLS Just Republish the May Jobs Report?

The BLS released the June Employment Situation Summary this morning, which showed (Establishment Survey) job creation of 80,000 and private sector payroll growth of 84,000. The April jobs number was revised down to 68,000 (from 77,000) and the May jobs number was revised up to 77,000 (from 69,000). Both the regular workweek and manufacturing workweek edged up by .1 hours for the month. The Household Survey showed an unemployment rate of 8.2% with job creation of 128,000. The labor force participation rate remained at 63.8% on a gain of 156,000 and the employment-population ratio remained at 58.6. Overall this report (when compared to recent months) was about the same, showing anemic growth (but still growth) and little change to the unemployment rate. The best news out of this report (in my opinion) was that the May number received an upward adjustment (albeit small) and that the workweek grew a bit. Other than those points, this report continued on the recent weakness in job creation we have seen since April. Read on for more analysis.

Since the seasonal adjustments have been called into question by just about everyone lately, let's take a look at the non-seasonally adjusted numbers from this report. The June Establishment Survey showed job creation (NSA) of 391,000, which means the seasonal adjustment subtracted 311,000 jobs from the NSA number. Also of note is that private sector NSA job creation for June was 815,000, while NSA government jobs posted a loss of 424,000 jobs for the month.

It is also interesting to note that in the last year the number of people 65+ who have left the labor force is 1.47 million (and yes, those people count when determining the labor force participation rate and employment-population ratio).

So, while job growth appears to have stagnated during the 2nd quarter, it also appears to have potentially stabilized at relatively low levels of job creation, hopefully allowing us to skirt another contraction in employment and potential contraction in the economy.